


give them an inch

by indecisivebehaviors



Series: Can't fight this feeling [5]
Category: Cobra Kai (Web Series)
Genre: Domestic Fluff, Fluff and Humor, Found Family Bonding™, Multi, blatant disregard for OSHA
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-18
Updated: 2021-02-18
Packaged: 2021-03-13 07:49:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,585
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29523201
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/indecisivebehaviors/pseuds/indecisivebehaviors
Summary: Sam and Miguel have a crisis. Robby is a good kid. Daniel is trying his best.Johnny just wants to sleep.
Relationships: Daniel LaRusso/Johnny Lawrence, Miguel Diaz & Robby Keene, Miguel Diaz/Samantha LaRusso
Series: Can't fight this feeling [5]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2200365
Comments: 9
Kudos: 87





	give them an inch

**Author's Note:**

> _set somewhere after 'the kids are alright'_

It’s safe to say that, if nothing else, Johnny Lawrence is not a fucking morning person. Whenever possible he will wake up well past 10 am and spend the next hour afterward with either a beer or coffee in hand to wake him the rest of the way up.

So it goes without saying that when he hears the phone blaring on the bedside table at seven in the morning on a Sunday, he’s more than a little pissed.

“For fuck sake would you turn that goddamn thing off!” He tugs the pillow from underneath his head and shoves it tightly over his head.

Daniel, for his part, only lightly swats at the pillow over his face before he reaches over and answers the phone mid-yawn, “LaRusso speaking.”

Johnny snorts from under the pillow and gets another smack to the face, and then he’s being shushed so he flips off the general direction he thinks he is and rolls over in an attempt to block out the conversation. This turns out to be significantly harder than he wants it to be.

“Amanda?” Daniel sounds like he is still actively in the process of waking up, and he’s about to take the phone out of his hand and chuck it across the room so they can both go the fuck back to sleep, when he sits up quickly and he very suddenly sounds much more awake, “Wait, Amanda, slow down, why is Sam coming over now?” Now that gets his attention, “Why is she upset?”

He shifts around and tucks the pillow under his side so he can lean into the space by Daniel’s hip, “What’s wrong with Sam?” His voice still rough with sleep.

Daniel shushes him again, “Would you be quiet for just a second,” before turning back to the phone, “What, no, Amanda I wasn’t talking to-” he gives a long suffering sigh, “it’s Johnny, if you must know, he and Robby stayed over last night- why does that matter? No, y’know what, this isn’t the point what’s wrong with Sam? What do you mean she just stormed out of the house?”

Johnny can only catch a few words on Amanda’s end, something along the lines of- _Sam, pissed, house, move._ Johnny is honestly way too tired to be trying to interpret anything, but from Daniel’s expression, it definitely isn’t a good thing.

“Amanda, when did you decide this?” He’s frustrated enough to let a little of the jersey accent back into his voice, “Okay, no, I understand not wanting to be there after what happened, it just seemed like a very sudden decision. The house is in your name, you can do what you want with it. Alright so Sam just found home listings you’d left out or..? You just told her and Anthony this morning?” He pinches the bridge of his nose groaning, “I understand you think it’s for the best, but she’s midway through the school year, she has friends here- I am perfectly aware of what happened Amanda.”

He shifts again to a more comfortable position, partially on the pillow and partially leaning on Daniel’s hip. The man in question only looks down at him briefly, but he reaches down to thread their fingers together, squeezing it tight for a second, and he watches the tension seep out of his shoulders before leaning back and closing his eyes.

Daniel takes a deep breath before addressing her again, “Okay, so, what I’m understanding from this is Sam is upset because you told her you wanted to sell the house and move, so now she’s coming here because she doesn’t want to talk to you. What do you expect me to do about that?” A brief pause, “No, I am not getting in the middle of this. If you want to move, and Anthony is- if Anthony wants to move with you that’s fine and we already agreed that he’d stay with you after- but Amanda, Sam is- she is _old enough_ to decide who she wants to live with. I am not going to sit here and try and convince her to move up north with you. Look I will talk to her when she gets here but if she wants to permanently move here with me I don’t see why that’s a problem,” he feels him squeeze his hand tighter, and his voice is tight, “You know for a fact that I lived here in my teens and most of my early 20s. There are already two bedrooms other than the master and if she really wanted extra space there’s room to build an addition. There is no reason she couldn’t be perfectly happy living here. Listen can we talk about this later? I’ll have her call you when she’s cooled off. _Goodbye._ ”

He wants to ask, really he does, because obviously, this sounds very serious but also, “It is way too fucking early to deal with your ex-wife.”

At least it seems to ease some tension in the room because he does actually laugh before looking down and smirking, “It is honestly far too early to deal with my ex-wife.” He leans up as far as he can without hurting his ribs and Daniel leans down to meet him halfway, and he tastes like morning breath, and honestly he could really care less because this is very quickly becoming his favorite way to wake up and _holy shit when did he turn into such a fucking sap?_

“So we _are_ going back to sleep right?” But no sooner are the words out of his mouth than they hear a loud knock on the bedroom door.

“Hey Dad I hope you’re wearing pants cause I'm coming in!” He groans audibly, throwing his head back down into Daniel’s lap, even as the man chuckles above him, calling back, “You can go ahead and come in Robby, your eyes are safe.”

The door creaks open and he hears a very over-exaggerated gagging noise, “Mr. L I thought you said they were _safe?_ ”

He very casually flips off the general direction of the door and doesn’t need to see to know Robby does it right back, and that LaRusso is rolling his eyes when he asks, impossibly fond and also very exasperated, “What did you need Robby?”

“Miguel just called, he’s coming over, like, now. Sam’s picking him up on her way.”

He groans again, when he makes the effort to sit up to look at his boy, “Why the fuck are all of you awake so goddamn early?” Daniel swats him in the shoulder.

Robby just shrugs, “Well Sam’s pissed, but she wouldn’t give me details over the phone, just said it was something to do with her mom. Miguel’s apparently also upset, but he also won’t tell me what’s wrong, but I know it’s not about Sam’s thing.”

They hear the front door slam in the other room, and honestly Johnny really isn’t a morning person.

And that’s how he finds himself in the kitchen, on his third cup of coffee, listening to Sam ranting at the counter.

“I mean how did she expect me to react? I grew up in that house and she just wants to sell it and move up north like it’s nothing? It’s complete bullshit-” Daniel mutters over the rim of his own mug, “Language.”, but Sam presses on like she doesn’t hear him, “and if she thinks I’m just gonna pack up and leave everything here then she’s completely lost her mind, _especially_ after everything that happened! It’s just so... ugh! I don’t wanna move out of the valley, all of my friends are here, _and_ you and Mr. Lawrence and she can’t make me give up karate no matter what she thinks about it.”

Robby who is sitting on the counter next to him looks about as overwhelmed as he feels right about now. Miguel, who is sitting next to her on one of the stools, head tucked into where he’s folded his arms on the counter, doesn’t even react. 

Daniel, who is sitting at her other side is, to no ones surprise, the calmest out of any of them, “Sam I understand that you’re mad about this, to be perfectly honest with you I’m also pretty upset about the whole thing, but it’s your mother’s decision if she wants to sell it. But, also, you’re almost an adult, and no one can make you do anything or live anywhere you don’t want to.”

Everyone already knows the answer when she looks up at him with the saddest puppy dog expression he’s ever seen, and she _actually_ looks like she’s going to cry, when she asks, “I can stay here with you right, Dad?”

He wraps his arm around her shoulder and pulls her into a side hug, “Of course you can stay here. I would love nothing more than for you to do that.” She makes no move to sit up afterward, just continuing to lean into his side.

And it’s great, this is great, but he knows this isn’t the only elephant in the room.

“Alright, that’s one crisis averted,” he drains the last half of his lukewarm coffee in one shot, and he’s sort of relieved when he hears Sam chuckle, “Diaz, what the hell is wrong with you?”

He groans and says something unintelligible into the counter. He jumps when Sam pokes him in the side, “Miguel literally no one can hear you when you do that.”

He grumbles about it, but sits up and crosses his arms over his chest, “Yaya’s sister called yesterday. She lives in Florida and is getting hip replacement surgery next week so she and mom wanna go down there and help her with PT and stuff.”

Sam sits up so suddenly it gives _him_ whiplash, “Wait what? You can’t just leave! What about school?” Miguel just shrugs, looking almost as much a sad puppy dog as Sam had just a second ago.

He’s already turning around to pour himself more coffee, already anticipating the words out of Robby’s mouth.

“Why don’t you just stay with me and Dad?”

The wide-eyed hopeful look that shows up on Miguel’s face has him sighing deeply, ignoring the pain in his chest at the action, and choking down the whole cup of coffee.

“Wait, really, Sensei can I do that?” 

He gives a long suffering sigh, “It’s not like you don’t walk around like you own the place anyway,” when his face falls a little, he’s quick to add, a lot less sarcastically, “yes, Miguel, _of course_ you can stay with us,” he doesn’t even get the sentence all the way out before he’s got his arms full of a very excited Diaz and he has to fight back a wince when he squeezes his ribs just a little too hard, cause he refuses to deal with that fucking kicked puppy face again today, “don’t get all hopped up just yet, you still gotta ask your mom.”

“Thank you, thank you, thank you!” And it’s all Johnny can do to stop himself from laughing outright at the look on Robby’s face when Miguel, seemingly completely unaware of his actions, turns and immediately hugs him right after. He looks like a deer in the headlights, arms hanging awkwardly at his side before he very gingerly reaches up hugs back, “Uh, yeah, no problem, man.”

Miguel for his part, doesn’t seem to even remotely understand how awkward his son is, because he just pulls back with a wide grin and then he’s pulling out his phone and walking towards the living room, “I’ve gotta call Mom!”

* * *

Carmen, somehow, is actually convinced fairly easily to let Miguel stay with them. She hadn’t really wanted to have to pull Miguel out of school, and she’d told him privately, a very amused smirk on her face, that she _had_ actually planned on asking him anyway.

So yeah everything seems to work out pretty easy. He hardly notices a change, to be honest, the only real difference being that the boys end up sleeping in Robby’s room more, instead of bouncing between his and the Diaz apartment. Sam moves into the dojo shortly afterward, and she even seems to be back on friendly terms with her mother again, which he is silently grateful for(teenage drama is exhausting), and it doesn’t take a lot of convincing from Miguel to get the other kids to help her move her stuff. Daniel only threatens him a little when he tries to do more than drive the truck. 

Also if he’s being honest, the three of them spend as much time at Miyagi-do as they do at the apartment. Daniel insists whenever possible that they come over to _spare the boys from your awful taste in food,_ which he was gonna be mad about but it’s an excuse to sleep over most of the time which he thinks is enough excuse to not argue too much. It’s been quiet all things considered.

Things, for once seem to be looking up.

Then the pipes burst.

He doesn’t know whether it was lucky or not that he and the boys had actually been at the apartment complex when it happened. They manage to save a lot from getting ruined(his couch was a lost cause to begin with so he doesn’t feel too bad about it), including most of Robby and Miguel’s personal things and most of their clothes, and most of the Diaz apartment is spared the brunt of the damage. But the floors are still covered in an inch of water before anyone shuts off the pipes and most of the furniture is completely soaked through. When he calls her to let her know what happened, he’s equally impressed and a little scared by the seemingly endless string of curses(in both English and Spanish) that comes out of Carmen’s mouth when she chews out the landlord over the phone. He’d almost feel bad for the guy if it wasn’t so funny.

He ends up renting another truck and he and the boys manage to get a lot of what they’d salvaged over to a storage unit. His ribs ache like a motherfucker, and Daniel’s absolutely gonna lecture him for lifting so much shit, but he’s much more afraid of Carmen’s wrath than he is of a few broken ribs. The big pieces they just have to leave behind to dry with the industrial fans.

When they’re finally done, it’s well past 2am and they’re all completely exhausted.

Daniel does absolutely chew him out over the phone when he calls to let him know what happened, but then he’s insisting they come over, and honestly where else was he gonna go this late at night anyway?

The boys are quick to settle into the guest room they normally use when they stay over, Sam quietly fussing over them, but it isn’t long before all of them have passed out.

Then it’s almost 3 and he’s back in Daniel’s bed, and his ribs hurt way too much for him to do anything other than just sleep for the next 10 hours really, but honestly, he doesn’t mind too much.

* * *

When he walks into the kitchen, at almost noon, to choke down some more painkillers with his coffee, he briefly thinks about questioning it when Daniel tells him, “You and the boys are staying here until your apartment gets fixed.”

He doesn’t.

  
Daniel’s mattress is more comfortable anyway.

**Author's Note:**

> no beta- we die like men


End file.
